Sex in the Women’s Library blog

This is the sixth in a series of podcasts that share some of the discussion from a group ‘What women talk about when they talk about sex’ that took place at Glasgow Women’s Library during spring and Summer 2015 as part of our Sex in The Women’s Library Season supported by the Wellcome Trust.

This is the fifth in a series of podcasts that share some of the discussion from a group ‘What women talk about when they talk about sex’ that took place at Glasgow Women’s Library during spring and Summer 2015 as part of our Sex in The Women’s Library Season supported by the Wellcome Trust.

In this fascinating set of extracts the group gets to grips with the patriarchal (media) fragmentation of the body and some of the consequences of adopting the props of sexuality, whether stockings or fishnets for the living, breathing, sweating and moving female body . This discussion shifts to related topics of gendering, significantly the socialising of women into habitual apologising. The group concludes by returning to the ineffable question of ‘what women want’ from sex.

In these exchanges the group tackles the time honoured feminist territory of bras. Issues of management, the judgement and surveillance of oneself and by others, presentation and concealment of the body and ideas of private and public display of breasts are shared and there is discussion of how backs are also subject to criticism and policing.

This is the third in a series of podcasts that share some of the discussion from a group ‘What women talk about when they talk about sex’ that took place at Glasgow Women’s Library during spring and Summer 2015 as part of our Sex in The Women’s Library Season supported by the Wellcome Trust.

In this discussion session, Kim chose to deploy a Feminist Memory Work approach to the discussion and chose the ‘banal’ but clearly evocative terrain of Hair to open up discussions of sexuality, the body and women’s self-image. Hair is revealed as a personal and political subject, redolent with associations of learning about sex, sexuality and gender for many of the discussion group participants.

This is the second in a series of podcasts that share some of the discussion from a group ‘What women talk about when they talk about sex’ that took place at Glasgow Women’s Library during spring and Summer 2015 as part of our Sex in The Women’s Library Season supported by the Wellcome Trust.

This is the first in a series of podcasts that share some of the discussion from a group ‘What women talk about when they talk about sex’ that took place at Glasgow Women’s Library during spring and Summer 2015 as part of our Sex in The Women’s Library Season supported by the Wellcome Trust.

These extracts typify the wide ranging discussion on the body. They evoke many of the issues that have vexed feminism debates in the Second Wave on representation, body dysmorphia and the struggle for women to claim their bodies as their own and to navigate the ways they could perceive them as positive and having sexual agency.

The Story Café Sexology Special: May 14 @ 12:30 pm – 2:30 pm In the novel The Proof of the Honey by Syrian author Salwa al-Neimi poetic insight blends with sexual frankness. I spoke to GWL’s librarian Wendy Kirk about the Sotry Café’s special Sexology event, on choosing the above book to read and discuss, […]